We had a raid member who showed up later for like every raid. Altho it was always just between 5 and 10 minutes.
We talked to him and told him that when we are waiting with 24 people for one person for 10 minutes it is 240 minutes in total and not 10.
He understood and agreed to try to come in time.

Next raid he showed up 1.5 hours too late...
and his excuse was hilarious: "Sorry the train took the wrong way". He could have mentioned everything. Even tho a ship or a bus taking the wrong way is highly unplausible, but a train??? It drives on rails, so how the heck can a train go the wrong way? All i can think of is "Sorry i took the wrong train".

I had two happen in the past three months with a couple of my raiders that were interesting.

One guy was gone for a week because he got stuck in an avalanche in Canada somewhere.

The other was gone for about 2 months because he had to take care of his ill father. Then, when they finally took his dad to the hospital they realized his father was an illegal, so they deported him and our raid member had to go with him back to Mexico to try and get him back in the United States. Customs took his phone for some reason too when he went to Mexico, so we didn't hear from him for awhile.

For me, my real life is more important. I have only ever had a few people that I would consider friends in the years I played WoW. If you have a whole raid full of friends, and that's what you enjoy, fair play to you. Enjoy it. Do what you want. It's your life.

This is my life, and if I decide to go out/do something that interferes with the raiding schedule then god help them, because I literally couldn't give a poop.

[please don't post image macros. thanks]

I always treated my WoW-Guild as the Soccer-Team i was a member when i was a teenager. Sometimes my parents would take me to grandparents and shit so i missed the game, there was something at school or something else so i missed train and so on. I always let the Coach now and everything was fine.

But just saying "nah Coach i'm drinking booze with my bras no train for me this evening" would get me benched for next game or something worse. There were ~15 other people that rely on me.

WOW-Raiding with my guild is the same for me. When i have other plans i let the guildleader know, he can get a stand-in or someone else and everything is fine. But show up online 5mins before raid and say that i go drinking with ma bras or completly not showing up so i steal 9 other players time and make the life of my raidleader worse? no way.

Heard quite a few silly, weird and outrageous excuses over the years. So many trials who claim they were in a traffic accident when they forgot to show up.
But a few stand out in my mind:

Older woman showing up late, claiming it ended up being that late because her daughter's boyfriend was paying for dinner. (Made us all wonder why that would cause you to come late... boyfriend had no money so he had to pay by washing dishes?)

Same older woman cancelling raid because she was helping her daughter put together a bed from IKEA. (Because there's no chance to do this before the raid starts, right?)

Guy cancelling because he put a screwdriver through his hand. (Is that even possible?)

Guy not returning from raid break, came back weeks later saying he was arrested for fraud and the police took his computer. (Yeah, and I'm sure the police also deleted everyone in the guild from his RealID so they couldn't see him playing his off-server characters.)

Female cancelling because she nearly chopped off her fingertip while chopping wood.

Guy cancelling because of being too drunk... with all the grammar/spelling errors and a drunken admission to make it believable. (I guess this one had to be seen.)

2 guys, 1 female cancelling for different made up reasons, but everyone knew it was because guy 1 finally found out guy 2 had a thing going with his girl.

Guy (the strongest healer) had to go midraid to play arena to make gladiator. (He didn't even get the second best rank.)

Female leaving 20 minutes into the raid because her husband was trying to kill the cat. (Nobody even knew she had a cat... or a husband - half of the male raiders were distraught)

Originally Posted by Butterball

Homophobia: What a straight man feels when he thinks a gay guy is going to treat him the same way the straight guy treats women....

Heard quite a few silly, weird and outrageous excuses over the years. So many trials who claim they were in a traffic accident when they forgot to show up.
But a few stand out in my mind:

Older woman showing up late, claiming it ended up being that late because her daughter's boyfriend was paying for dinner. (Made us all wonder why that would cause you to come late... boyfriend had no money so he had to pay by washing dishes?)

Same older woman cancelling raid because she was helping her daughter put together a bed from IKEA. (Because there's no chance to do this before the raid starts, right?)

Guy cancelling because he put a screwdriver through his hand. (Is that even possible?)

1. Perfectly normal... Daughter and her BF decided to take mama out on a dining date. BF pays, BF decided where they go. Such scenario happens more than often, and trumps raiding any given time.

2. I'm sure they started the project earlier, but just because now there's a raid going on, doesn't mean the whole construction comes to a halt now, and the daughter possibly ending up sleeping on the couch that night, over a silly computer game? Here too, it happens more than often. A room redo just takes longer than anticipated. Nothing fishy about it.

3. You would be surprised what weird and funny injuries happen to people with tools. Should take the time and look into it. You hold something with one hand, you screw from the other side with the other hand, and something goes wrong. Your screwdriver slips.. And you can't stop fast enough. Bam.. It's in the other hand. Very common to have to use pressure and force against a screw. Nothing really special on that...

We were in naxx 25 doing Noth the Plaguebringer, sudenly one of our belgian guildies screamed "OH NO MY TREE" and went afk for well over an hour, so we replaced him, when he came back the next day we asked him what had happened, he said a car had crashed into his apple tree.

A few months ago, we were in MSV and our hunter says in the middle of the raid that he has to leave in 15 minutes. We're all good friends IRL so we started bugging him and asking why he had to go. He tells us that his friend was at a strip club and needed to go pick him up. We finished raid a little early that night.

I hope some of you went with.

---------- Post added 2013-03-05 at 11:23 AM ----------

Originally Posted by FrankLampard

Raiding on WoW is still a GAME. WoW is a GAME.

For me, my real life is more important. I have only ever had a few people that I would consider friends in the years I played WoW. If you have a whole raid full of friends, and that's what you enjoy, fair play to you. Enjoy it. Do what you want. It's your life.

This is my life, and if I decide to go out/do something that interferes with the raiding schedule then god help them, because I literally couldn't give a poop.

[please don't post image macros. thanks]

could you please list your main toon and server just so that we can ensure you do not successfully app one of our guilds?

---------- Post added 2013-03-05 at 11:25 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Freia

We had a tank who openly said he thought heroic MSV was a waste of time while we were trying to progress on it. One raid day we planned on doing heroic elegon, he says he is "lagging" and proceeds to run around to Terrace and HoF and proclaiming he is only lagging in MSV and didn't know what is wrong. We bring in a tank alt from the weekend raid team. After we get a 2% wipe, our tank stopped lagging and said he would come in. I was annoyed our raid leader brought him in (the tank we brought in should have gotten the kill over our lazy tank who didn't want to put in the work). Eventually we finally got him replaced. He would only want to raid Terrace then make excuses for the other days (many times while playing on his alts during our raid time) and he also had major performance issues.

feel your pain. we had a holy pally who could not be bothered with excessive wipes but would show up once we had things figured out and on farm.

---------- Post added 2013-03-05 at 11:29 AM ----------

Originally Posted by FrankLampard

If you want social interaction, why not go out with friends you could have drinks with, and have a decent laugh with?

Socialising through a headset with people you've likely never met isn't what I call quality socialising. But hey, to each their own.

Online Freind Defined.

One of our top dps, a shadowpriest, and long time supporter of the guild needed to miss our final attempts at getting ahead of the curve by downing Sha last night. He had tickets for WWE Raw.

Posted on the front page of our website is how he continued to support his freinds in Judgement even from ring side.

"I don't feel like raiding." I'd say that's the best excuse. This isn't a job, people should stop treating it like one. If someone wants to do battlegrounds or arena instead of raid, or doesn't want to be on the game at all for whatever reason, that's their choice. They aren't obligated to play, much less play by your schedule. If a girlfriend or good friend wants to hang out in real life, I'm not going to tell them I can't because I have to raid. Sadly I've got a friend who's like that, and it's pathetic. It's little wander raiding participation is low, with people turning it into a job.

and conversely do not comit then not meet your comitments. it shows poor morale character.

---------- Post added 2013-03-05 at 11:42 AM ----------

Originally Posted by NightZero88

Let's see, back in SSC, we had a guy from Turkey who in the middle of the raid said he had to go get a haircut. He was gone for like 2 weeks after saying he'd be back in 30 minutes. Became a running joke.

Another guy we know, always had to take a shower at 10PM every night on the DoT. Also used to joke with him about what he was doing in the shower.

Slightly off-topic, but I am the raid leader for my group. I consider us a casual group and myself easy going. If an emergency comes up or you can't make a raid and you tell me in advance, sure that's fine. But if you don't text me (most of my raiders have my cell) or let me know in advance and just don't show, it pisses me the hell off. Yes, the game is a game, and yes, you can do whatever you want. However, if 9 other people are sitting waiting 30+ minutes for you and you never log in, well then you're just screwing over 9 or 24 other people because you're lazy. If it was an emergency on your way home then I can understand but any sort of other excuse like I overslept or forgot we are raiding, nuh uh. Yeah, it's a game, but think of the 9 or 24 other people who are wasting /their/ time because of you.

I fully agree with what you have to say. All of my core raiders have my cell phone number and can text me at any time. Just not showing up without even an attempt to contact us, barring a life and death emergency, is just dissrespectfull to the rest of the group.

I would argue that deciding to leave on a thursday and return on a tuesday to "visit my mom" does not rate as a life or death emergency.

guy said he was too burnt out to raid this weekend, he didnt know that we knew his 'secret alt' on his other char, and he was raiding in the same raid that we were going to do in a different guild. he got teh boot.

Ok, not missing a raid, but a pug screwing up and wiping us:
I'm sorry, my boobs got in the way!
Nobody raged, nobody kicked her, our gm invited her to join our guild after verifying in vent that it was a she, after that it's become something of a tradition to say: i'm sorry, my boobs got in the way everytime someone screws up xD